The Kunstcluster (Art Cluster) is a landmark of the town centre of Nieuwegein, which is to be redeveloped over the next few years. A new town hall is to be built, with shops, homes and offices above ground, and underground parking. The site of the Kunstcluster consists of two conjoined blocks: the theatre with arts centre as well as the multi-storey car park combined with retail space.

The new theatre comprises two auditoria: a main stage with circle, seating audiences of 650 – 700, with podium and ample stage space for all types of production; and a studio theatre seating 200, also with circle. The studio consists of flat floor and foldaway stage, and will be available for events of all kinds, including pop and other music. Completing the complex are three spectacular foyers and a theatre café looking on to the central square, the Stadsplein. Above the theatre will be an arts centre, a multifunctional venue for music, dance and acting classes.

The glass façade is printed, to give the illusion of (stage) curtains. This applied print also considerably reduces the percentage of light penetration via the south and east façade, preventing overheating on sunny days. The foyers, and therefore most people, are located on the Stadsplein façade to the south. Here, the pigment of the print is sufficiently transparent and translucent to make the image visible from inside to outside, and from outside looking in.

A ‘shop window,’ roughly 20 metres high, enables anyone walking across the central square to get a glimpse of the audiences inside. Theatregoers, in turn, overlook the town centre from the three foyers, respectively 5, 10 and 15 metres up. The façade is floodlit after dark with energy-saving LED lighting.

In the redeveloped town centre nearly all cars will go underground. The multi-storey car park next to the Kunstcluster is an exception. This block is literally a green lung in the stone-built urban environment. Analysis during the design process came up with the idea of a parking structure which would be carbon-neutral both to build and, expressly also, to operate. The garage frontage on the Stadsplein side is four metres thick. Here a cascade stairway wends its way up down through a bamboo plantation six metres high. Prints on the balustrades and other glazed surfaces graphically reflect the bamboo image. The ground floor accommodates retail, resulting in a living streetscape.

In its earliest phase, at the start of the 1970s, construction activity in ‘new town’ Nieuwegein concentrated on its residential areas. Around when the city centre was about to have its turn, the economic climate offered little space for financing. The result was an introverted, cheap-looking shopping mall. Like many other ‘new towns’, Nieuwegein now faces the task of transforming the old shopping mall into a new vibrant heart. The structure inherited from the 1970s is to be subjected to a comprehensive revision.

The municipality’s development vision is elaborated in detail by Ben van Berkel (un Studio), Michael van Gessel and Bureau B+B: a unique task, whose aim and scope are comparable to the urban core designed by oma in the same years for Almere. The process of financing this urban renewal project, whose plan provides for a wide-ranging programme, including homes, offices, a town hall, an urban theatre, a cinema, a music centre, a library and a doubling of the present shop floor space, results in the programme being placed under considerable pressure. These significant additions are only attainable by means of an intensive, manifold use of the available space.

Flower fence along square

The design proposes a dynamic whole, comprised of transparent storeys, in which continuous activity is possible from morning to night. The city centre becomes outwardly open in a representative manner and makes contact with the water of the Doorslag Canal. The public space is distributed over different levels, unified by means of a folded ground level that leads the visitor in a self-explanatory manner to all components of the programme. The elaboration of the design for the public space has as its concept ‘the blooming city’. This translates into a striking pavement pattern employing natural stone in two different mixtures. The pattern breaks free of both plan and architecture by means of an abstract representation of such natural elements as branches and flowers. The greenery is concentrated on the plazas.

Flower fence

Tree islands and raised tree-squares with integrated seating elements give each plaza its own unique character. Blossoming trees, such as magnolias and prunuses, alternating with trees that feature lovely autumn colours, give the new urban heart an attractive appearance throughout the year. One of the plazas owes its identity in part to its unusual fencing. Here, the floral pattern attains independence in the third dimension.